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"Thank God!" echoed Paul, the obvi

ous.

"Come over and sit in my hammock with me," now invited the widow. "My name is Simone Drummond, and I'm terribly bored."

"We'll soon alter that," said Paul. "Oh, will we?" said Simone, clasping her hands. "Are you sure we will?"

"Absolutely," said Paul, who now, poor thing, was feeling slightly wicked and Anthony Hopeish.

They talked. She was young and

lovely; she had been unhappy; when what she referred to as "his horrid estate" was settled, she would be rich. Paul need n't think because she used the vocabulary of levity that she had no mind; she had. She was a Feminist, very advanced; she hinted that her life had been such that only her natural goodness had kept her from being driven to extremes of opinion. Was Paul a Feminist? Oh, yes, indeed; Paul was anything that she liked. Oh, he held advanced views, most advanced! Did he believe in Ellen Key?

Paul had never heard of that lady, so he believed in her devoutly.

And why on earth was Louise Kellogg lashing up and down her back yard like a lioness deprived of her prey?

This, Paul wittily remarked, he could not tell her.

They both laughed at this. Already they were in that perilous state of mind when anything serves for a joke between a man and a woman. How advanced he was he now proved by dishing up some of Hemmingway's philosophic trash about men and women being more adventurous together.

When he left, it was almost supper-time. "One gets acquainted quickly in a desert," she remarked.

After supper he sat on the porch with the Lovely Lady. She had been young when she drove with him, touchingly so; but now the shadows of age had again mysteriously shut in about her. Despite her smooth skin, there was that about her that foreshadowed spinsterhood in a way that to Paul was touching and unbearable.

"She's worth the whole lot of them," he thought vaguely. "The whole lot of them" stretched very wide, almost reaching the place where Consuela dwelt.

You may have observed that up to now Paul has had but little time to moon about concerning Consuela. What he was aware of was not having time enough for talk with the Lovely Lady.

His reflection concerning the Lovely Lady was now fulfilled by the appearance of a little shell-tinted wren of a girl. She was round and small, with quantities of soft, drab hair, gold at the points. She stood in a charming embarrassment before them. When she was introduced to Paul, she merely let her eyes rest on him like those of a child and said nothing. She was very young; there was something about her both touching and pleasing.

Her name, it seemed, was Clover Branch. Soon after having imparted this information to Paul, the Lovely Lady excused herself. She seemed, Paul reflected, to be always doing this in favor of the very young.

There was a silence; then, after a long sigh, Clover said:

"Oh, how I wish I were pretty like Clara and Louise!"

Paul found nothing whatever to say to this remark, which embarrassed him, except, "Why?"

To this Clover replied, with limpid in

nocence:

"So you'd like me better."

"I like you as you are," said Paul. What else would you have expected him to say?

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"You 've passed my house a hundred times and never looked at me. Her voice was like the mourning of a dove; and now he perceived that it was a dove and not a wren that she resembled.

"And where do you live?" said Paul. "Next door."

Up to this there had been only one next door to Paul.

Then she covered her face with her hands.

"It 's awful," she said, "it 's awful for me to have come over here just to get

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"Come over and sit in my hammock with me,' now invited the widow. My name

is Simone Drummond, and I'm terribly bored""

introduced! Oh, what will Clara and Louise say!" She fled.

You naturally expect, don't you, that Paul soon offered to take Clover Branch to ride in his motor? Your expectations are not disappointed.

TURN on the hands of the clock for an extraordinarily busy week. I mentioned. before that Simone was fair and young and had been unhappy; you will not have forgotten that they started off with "Paul and Simone." But also, living in a house with them, it was astonishing how much time he found for persiflage-and this word is a euphemy-with Clara and Louise, and since Clover Branch had hung over the fence and looked at him with dove eyes and said, "Oh, take me for just a turn!" he had done so. As the French say, "What would you have?”

Alone, the Lovely Lady had faded out of the picture. At the end of a week. Paul was no longer feeling like a devil of a fellow, which sustaining emotion had borne him along at such a headlong speed. Indeed, at this belated day the idea was beginning to penetrate Paul that it was about time to "pull out of here." There are situations when you either go on or you don't.

There was that night a strawberry sociable at the church, and Paul invited to it the Lovely Lady. She seemed surprised.

"Why, if you really want me-" she hesitated.

"I really do," said Paul, earnestly. She smiled at him. Paul had the uneasy feeling that it was compassionately that she smiled, and comprehendingly. He wanted to shout to her, "No, I am not hiding behind you; I like you best." But naturally there are some things one cannot say, though during the week Paul had found a great many more things had been said than he had hitherto dreamed possible in this vale of tears. He was in a distinctly ungrateful frame of mind. There was a pasha-like blaséness about Paul at this moment, a feeling of satiety of a sort that had made him think when Clara had

frisked before him not long before, "Hang it! I can't kiss everybody, you know!"

Now mark what may befall a man in a short time.

It was six forty-five, and supper was over. Not until a quarter past eight would one start for the sociable. The voices of Clara and Louise in altercation reached his ears:

"Widow or no widow," came Clara's voice, "I should think you 'd be ashamed to use a harpoon the way you do. You began the very first night he came here. You know it."

"Well, I like that!" Louise cried in response. "I began the very first night, and you! Harpoon!" just indignation choked her. "Let me tell you, Clara Kellogg, I prefer to be a harpoon than a piece of flypaper!"

Contrary to his intention, Paul removed himself to smoke his cigarette at Simone's. A week has passed, remember a week in a desert! A week filled with the companionship of a swiftly moving and perilous friendship; a week full of windy talk about the equal place in the world of men. and women; a week where they had brandished their spears against the old demon Convention, where they had had the fine, heady feeling of being free spirits. She allured him and eluded him; she led him on, and fled from him only to return to him again; she was a sweet, soft thing, a delightful thing. Paul was everything except in love with her. He had been making love to her, or was it she who had made love to him? But there was a limit somewhere. "What the devil do you do with them when you have made love to them?" was what he was beginning to ask himself. There was no place to go but on, thought he despairingly, and "on" precisely was just where Paul was not going to go. There was, though the reader may have forgotten it, Consuela.

He went over, meaning to tell Simone that he was going, and somehow-now here we come to the meanness of men's situation he felt like a skunk in having to tell her that.

Why, I ask you? Had Simone at this

moment pronounced the word "Good by," and vanished, our sympathies would be with her; but there is not a man living who does not know how difficult these words would be to speak to a woman in these circumstances, especially as they greeted each other as though they had not seen each other for years.

"Paul!"

"Simone!" Their hands clasped.

He sat down moodily; the disgust of too much life enveloped him, the conversation between Clara and Louise jangled disagreeably in his ears.

For Paul the hour had struck; right or wrong he was through. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, just as girls get through in similar circumstances.

"Paul?" Simone's voice came quiveringly out of the dark-"Paul, we can't go on like this."

"No," said Paul, gloomily.

"We are not children," said Simone.
Paul said nothing.

Simone put her hand on Paul's; her golden-brown eyes were fixed on him appealingly.

"We 'd better go in; it 's mosquitoy out here."

Paul muttered uneasily. There was no Anthony Hopeishness about him this time, you perceive.

"Paul, this has been too intense to go on in the usual way; it has taken us and whirled us up."

"Uh-huh," said Paul.

"I know you'll understand what I'm going to do, Paul. I suppose you are n't ready to marry,-men of your age rarely are in a position to,-but I am, Paul. have plenty for both of us."

I

Paul felt as though a blood-cell had burst inside of his brain. This was what things had led to; he was being proposed to!

You know what he felt like? He felt like a cad; he felt like an oaf; he wished he had never been born; he begged her to forgive him; he was beside himself. Not that he showed it, for it was as though he were frozen. It was Simone who mobilized first, and vanished in the dusk.

I ask you, when women do things like this, must n't we reconstruct our point of view? Men must be allowed to refuse the unwelcome advances of ladies with dignity; and yet there are prehistoric reptiles like Hemmingway still on earth who not only uphold the old theory that you must never let a woman bat an eye at you in vain, but also that you must begin this nefarious business yourself.

When a woman refuses a man, how does she feel? Properly pained, we trust, but perfectly in her own right, dignified, and aware of her virtue. And how does a man feel? Like the things that crawl, of course; like the worm, like the hound.

Since it is being done every day, civilization must find a way out of this impasse.

I plead for Paul. He and Simone had jumped into this together; to be sure, Paul knew that he was engaged, and Simone did not. On the other hand, Simone began it. Girls have often done the same. And then, besides, it was not the engagement; they each took their chances. In fiction we always have it the other way around, but life splits at fifty and fifty. for us.

He gathered himself together, and with great precaution he walked around to his own abode with the view of eluding Clara and Louise until it should be time to take their Aunt Miriam to the sociable. He was drenched in humiliation. He had deceived a perfectly nice woman into proposing to him; he wished to God that he had a keeper. A glad thought shot through him. He had one; there sat the able, hot-tempered, and ardent Consuela ready to perform this much-needed task.

A voice in the gloom assailed his ears. It was the little voice of Clover Branch.

"Good evening, Mr. Brockway," said she; "don't forget you promised to take me for a little turn to-morrow morning." He followed over the fence.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't take you; I'm leaving."

"You 're-y-you 're leaving?" Her voice faltered.

"Yes, leaving." He wished to God it

did n't sound so like Weber and Field's. What a fool he was, anyway!

"Oh dear! oh dear!" wailed Clover. "Oh, I'm so disappointed! I lo-love m-motoring, and n-nobody but that redheaded Wharf boy ever takes me here." She wept.

"There, there," comforted Paul, "don't cry!" He sat down beside her. She continued to sob. It was too distressing. A great pity for this child's narrow life surged over Paul. He sat beside her on the bench for some time, comforting her, saying little kind things to her. In the end he kissed her. For a moment she sat with her head on his shoulder saying,

"I know I'm a fool, but it 's all right now."

He sat there until it was time to go. He said good-by to her kindly; then, since she held her face up toward him, again he kissed her.

While he was eating strawberry icecream with the Lovely Lady, the voice of Mrs. Branch smote his ears:

"No," said she, "Clover ain't told me a thing about it yet; but I can see for myself how things are."

"Well, you know these city chaps," replied another unseen voice, “are mighty slippery."

With a vehemence into which the purpose of a lifetime had been compressed, "Slippery nothing!" replied Mrs. Branch. "All I 've got to say is that what my two eyes have seen let no man put asunder!"

The Lovely Lady's eyes sought his. Alas! laughter was in them!

"Run," she said in a low voice. "You said you were going to-morrow; go tonight. A good-natured thing like you has

n't one eighth of a chance in a town like this."

Have they a chance anywhere, I wonder, except in those sheltered safe portions. of the globe that Paul had inhabited? Women like Miriam are rarer every day. Every day we see returning from the fray able young Valkyries like Louise with heroes across their saddle-bows. Every day we see swains stuck helplessly in the flypaper spread by crafty Claras.

Meanwhile, through the night, Paul Brockway, withered up in shame and humiliation, was speeding toward Consuela and safety. Broad and vulgar Comedy had pursued him to Simone Drummond, where Tragedy had brushed him with its wing, and now that nothing should be wanting to his abasement, grotesque Farce had stepped in to do its awful work upon his spirit.

In his flight through the darkness Paul felt as though pursued by witches; the world seemed full of able young women who could up and marry a man against his will before you could say Jack Robinson. Not in early Hebrew days did any pursued victim seek sanctuary more gladly than Paul. A little while before and the altar had seemed to him a prison; now it was deliverance.

He arrived rather late. Hemmingway was on the piazza. Paul perceived that nothing had changed. Hemmingway's voice boomed out in the darkness, "You only learn to understand them by making love to them."

"Understand hell!" thought Paul as he ascended the steps toward the haven of safety. "I suppose you only learn to understand dynamite by exploding it!"

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